


Suddenly I've Got My Wings

by Haberdasher



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (sort of), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Archivist Jonathan Sims, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Childhood Trauma, Daemon Settling, Daemons, Eyes, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Moth Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, POV Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:07:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25228807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haberdasher/pseuds/Haberdasher
Summary: An examination of Jon's relationship with his moth daemon.
Comments: 14
Kudos: 154





	Suddenly I've Got My Wings

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [get your epitaph right](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24288232) by [bibliocratic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bibliocratic/pseuds/bibliocratic). 



> While this is inspired by get your epitaph right, the two are not set in the same verse, and certain details differ between the two.

As a young child, long before his daemon Anjah was due to settle, Jon tended to go through phases where she would take on the same appearance for days, weeks, even months at a time.

The first such phase Jon could remember was Anjah as a seagull when he first moved to Bournemouth, after his mother’s death, when living by the sea with his grandmother was still new and exciting. That lasted for a good few months, but other such phases came and went throughout Jon’s childhood.

His daemon was a dragonfly, a platypus, a bearded dragon, a quokka, a poison dart frog... any animal that caught Jon’s attention, through interest in the animal species itself or through it being the daemon of a favorite historical figure or fictional character, was likely to be Anjah’s default shape for some time, usually for however long it took for him to find a new animal that interested him more. More than once, adults thought that Jon had settled early because his daemon had stayed in the same form for so long.

This wasn’t to say that Anjah never took forms out of convenience’s sake rather than to align herself with Jon’s current subject of fascination. If they needed to hide, Anjah would become something small and stealthy; if Jon needed protection, she would become something big and strong; if Jon was exploring, she would become something that could keep up with him. Still, though, she took such forms of opportunity significantly less so than the daemons of most children Jon’s age.

Most of these phases blended together in Jon’s mind over time, the individual animals and when he favored them becoming little more than a blur as years passed, but one that Jon always remembered no matter how old he grew was the week and a half spent when he was seven where Anjah was a brown recluse spider, because some Renaissance-era icon of his had had one as a daemon, and so Jon had wanted his to be the same.

After reading a certain book when he was eight years old, though, Anjah never took on a spider’s form again. Jon always wondered if his grandmother noticed, but he never asked and she never mentioned it.

Anjah still went through phases afterwards, but she did tend towards smaller, more unassuming forms from then on. Some might have found this counter-intuitive, might have thought Jon would prefer Anjah to take on a form that exuded strength and presence, but Jon knew better than to find comfort in such things. The boy who had been eaten in Jon’s place had had a hulking lioness as a daemon, a big muscular animal that always stuck by his side and bared her fangs at any who dared challenge them. It hadn’t saved him.

Jon was half-convinced that Anjah would settle after that particular incident--settling _was_ often associated with significant formative experiences, and that one certainly fit the bill--but eight years old was exceptionally early for a child’s daemon to settle, and while young Jon was precocious in a number of ways, that apparently wasn’t one of them. It was four long years after that before Anjah actually settled, and it happened on an otherwise-unremarkable Saturday morning, with no clear impetus that Jon could figure out, try though he did after the fact.

Anjah settled as a moth, though she had been a wasp the night before. She was a Polyphemus moth specifically, Jon soon learned, _Antheraea polyphemus_. On the large side as far as moths go, brown with purple eyespots on her hindwings, rather pretty.

Jon dove into daemon analysis books shortly after settling, though he trusted the symbolism they imparted little more than he trusted the supposed meanings behind star signs. It was all the same vague sort of nonsense that could apply to anyone, he figured. Intelligence, fragility, determination, secrecy, transformation... sure, some of that applied to Jon clearly enough, but the same could likely be said for just about any animal species he came up with.

Jon figured if there was a meaning behind his daemon being a moth, it had less to do with all of that symbolic gobbledygook and more to do with the deep pit in his stomach that had settled there when Anjah herself had settled, no further explanation required.

After all, Jon knew well enough, even at that age, that spiders ate moths...

Anjah alternated between flitting around near Jon and hiding within his clothes, and when he’d gone in for his initial interview at the Magnus Institute she’d settled for the latter, so Jon wasn’t all that surprised when his interviewer, one Elias Bouchard, didn’t have a visible daemon either. Some smaller daemons preferred staying out of sight; Jon didn’t think it was anything more than that.

When Anjah darted out from within his suit jacket near the end of the interview, though, Elias grinned at the sight. At the time, that just confirmed Jon’s thoughts about Elias’ own daemon being hidden away as well, though even back then he’d wondered if something about Elias’ amusement with Anjah had helped clinch the interview for him, as he’d ended up getting the job despite an otherwise-lackluster interview and a CV with no mention of his only genuine experience with the supernatural.

Over time, after Jon became the head archivist of the Institute, became the _Archivist_ , he realized that Elias’ daemon probably hadn’t simply been hiding on his person as he had initially assumed, and that any amusement he had gotten from Anjah’s appearance must thus be unrelated.

Was it the eyespots, then? Elias seeing a daemon with eye-like markings and thinking that the symbolism there was too perfect to pass up, that he had to make sure its owner ended up aligned with the Eye? Had Elias seen Jon as a future Archivist in the making even then, his connection to the Eye eventually becoming as apparent as the spots on Anjah’s back?

And had Anjah’s eyespots always looked quite so lifelike?

After the world ended, Jon finally got an answer to this last question.

After the world ended, Jon could tell that Anjah was as transformed as he was, that her eyespots were more eye than spot now, a tool of vision rather than of mere deception.

After the world ended, Jon looked at the eyespots on Anjah’s hind wings, and for the first time in his life, he saw them blink.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this, consider following me on tumblr at [haberdashing](https://haberdashing.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
